And poor Lem wrung his hands in mortal terror, while Sibyl hastened from room to room, but, as may be anticipated, finding no one.
"What can this mean?" she thought. "There was certainly some one here to-night, and yet I find everything undisturbed. This is most strange; they must have gone, too, for the house is perfectly still. Oh, what could that cry of murder have meant? That voice and that light, quick step belonged to a woman, most certainly; yet what woman would venture out in such a storm? The girl Christie would not come, she is too timid, neither was it her voice. What—what can it all mean?"
Suddenly the recollection of the midnight visitor, the fair, pale woman with the dark, wild hair and eyes, who had bent over the couch of Willard Drummond the first night he had spent in the lodge came over her. It must have been that same supernatural visitant; and Sibyl grew for an instant faint and sick at the thought.
Further search in the house was fruitless; but her impatience would not permit her to wait until morning to investigate further. Returning to the kitchen, where Lem was on his knees, alternately groaning, praying, and bemoaning his hard fate, she commanded him to get his hat and come out with her, to see if any traces of intruders could be found on the island.
In vain did Lem begin expostulating; Sibyl cut it short by threatening him with her brother's future vengeance if he did not instantly obey. There was no help for it; and trembling in every limb, the frightened darkey followed his imperious mistress from the house.
All without was so calm and peaceful—all the more calm and peaceful, contrasted with the wild uproar of the storm a few hours before—that it seemed like sacrilege even to think of deeds of violence in such a spot. A delicious odor from the distant pine forest filled the air, and the fitful sighing of the wind among the trees, and the dull booming of the waves on the shore, alone broke the silence of early morning. The moonlight, obscured now and then by fitful clouds, brightly illumined their way, but nothing betrayed the presence of others save themselves on the isle that night.
Sibyl took the path leading in the direction from which the boat had started, but there the waves were breaking with the same monotonous sound, giving no indication of any one having been there. The tide had now receded sufficiently to allow Sibyl to walk around the beach; and, tempted by the calm beauty of the night, and feeling a sense of security in the open air, she strolled on until she reached the spot where Courtney, in his first moment of alarm, had dropped the body of Christie.
Something caught her eye at some distance further up, fluttering from a prickly thorn bush, evidently a fragment of dress. Feeling as if she had at last found some clew, she approached the spot and found it to be a white muslin handkerchief, but almost saturated with blood!
A sensation of horror came over Sibyl. Had there really been a murder committed there that night? Shrinking from touching it, she was about leaving the spot, when near one corner, free from the horrible stains that covered the rest, her eye fell on something like a name or initials. Taking the corner with the tips of her fingers, she beheld, marked in full, the name "Christina."
It was hers, then, Christie's. What could have brought it there? Had anything happened to her?